


Rakuen

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Werewolf Illya [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: Napoleon is about to speak again when the memory takes over Illya’s brain. Napoleon, slightly ahead of him. A long—a rifle, raising to aim. Danger, death.No.





	Rakuen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoffeeAndTin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndTin/gifts).



> Title inspired by the mythical wolf heaven in _Wolf's Rain_ , a show which will probably influence all my werewolves stories forever even though I never did manage to watch it all, yet.

The wolf surfaces, forced to consciousness by the bounce of its body against a moving mountain of solid fire. Its muzzle is bound shut, its paws caught in burning circles, and it trashes against the pain of it until sharp smells assault its nostrils and its heart slows down, as if caught under a solicitous tongue. Somewhere underneath, snow crunches with two-beats regularity, heavy breathing echoing through the cold howl of winter wind. The wolf’s shoulder stings and burns like fire, and it tries to twitch away from the pain of it, without success.

 

Darkness, when it comes, is familiar enough to feel like betrayal.

 

***

 

It emerges into the stale smell of sweat and dried blood. Long-settled dust and a mountain of oddly-shaped sheep fur tickle at every inch of it, squeeze around its lungs hard enough to make him jump back. Then, his shoulder melts into lava and he pauses, waits for the soothing voices and loving tongues, but nothing comes. Nothing has come for a long time, now, and he lets the pain scream through his muscles until it settles into an uneasy whine.

With the slow carefulness of the oft-injured, the wolf pushes his nose against the sheep-fur. Growls when it scratches at a fur-free face, too thin and too rough and void of pack-smells. Then a two-beats footstep lumbers on the other side of—beyond the—somewhere where sounds mean more than smells and skins have no fur to protect them. Images of that world tug at his memory, but the wolf is too much of an animal, still, and he shies away from it, paws coming up to rest over his muzzle with a loud whine of protest.

 

The lumbering stops.

 

Blessed silence wraps around Illya and then: shuffling, and rustling, and a strange string of meaningful sounds wrapped over something slapping against hollow wood. Illya, used to waking from injury into a death trap, struggles against the sheep-fur for a moment, pushes at it with clumsy pink paws until a mountain all but collapses next to him.

They aren’t on the ground: something bounces under them when the mountain settles in a cloud of oily and nose-searing smells. Illya knows better than to try and put words on these things just yet, and he pushes the last few inches out of the sheep-fu—blankets—only to find himself faced with brown. Like trees, but not quite, with holes in them. Frigid air licks past the holes, tickling at Illya’s nose until he tries to shift away from it and catches a glimpse of a forest with unfamiliar trees in it.

 

The creature at his back rumbles, some more of these significant sounds Illya has yet to remember. It smells like living meat, like warmth and something that was a sheep, once. Illya want to turn to it, chase the smell of it until he is a pup again, but the sharp smells and the oil on its fur are all wrong, the pink flat bits of its snout arranged in a way that leaves no room to pretend they are a familiar sight. Illya sighs, half a huff shivering against the blankets, and the creature reaches out with a pink, furless paw.

Illya recoils with a growl, snarling hard enough to make the creature pause, inches from his snout. Sound stumbles out of if, unfathomable but for the peace and warmth wrapped into them. Illya, recognizing the peace offering, stretches his neck to sniff at the appendage with undisguised wariness. It takes too long for his snout to make contact and Illya ignores the way his body feels like it’s fallen out of alignment with his soul. He lets the pink paw brush over his lips instead, not the ones he remembers from so many nights before, but warm enough to ease the knots at the top of his spine.

It takes a while to gather the proper sounds in his mind, but he manages eventually.

 

“Cowboy?”

 

The paw trembles against Illya’s mouth, a barrage of sound crashing over him, and he only manages to keep his head out from under the blanket because he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand the sight of his paws just now.

 

“Words,” he grumbles. “Many.”

 

Cowboy rumbles, safe and warm in a way that requires no word. His paw—his hand—leaves Illya’s mouth to settle on the top of his head, scratch behind his ear. Illya is too much of a wolf, still, to mind the flicker of displeasure at the gesture. He leans into the touch instead, sighing in relief, until Cowboy says:

 

“Water?”

 

Illya nods, then whines when Cowboy’s hand leaves him.

 

“Stay,” Cowboy says. “Back soon.”

 

Something about his voice makes Illya frown, but there is too much brown and too much white around him, so he huffs and buries his face in the blankets while Cowboy shuffles around. There is the sound of him padding across wood, the smell of fresh water, and Illya barks when his attempt to turn in that direction ends with searing pain in his shoulder.

Cowboy is by his side in an instant, easing him back down to the mattress with shushing noises. Illya stills under soothing touches, but doesn’t stop squirming until Cowboy pulls the blankets back up to his neck.

 

“Cowboy,” Illya tries.

 

It’s rough, and it seems wrong that his lips can even produce that sort of sound, but it comes with the weight of familiarity and, for a moment, Illya almost remembers what it was like to be a pup.

 

“Cowboy. What happened?”

 

For a moment, there’s no answer but the minute movement of pink on pink, a breath of air, a rustle of fabric. Illya lies on his back and tracks the movement of black fur curled over pink round ears. He wishes, foolishly, that he could howl. Push the things pressing at his chest out of him with a shout, instead of feeling them send fire in his cheeks and ice in his belly at the same time.

 

“Sentences?” Cowboy asks with one last pat to Illya’s head.

“Yes,” Illya confirms, even though he still has doubts. “Short.”

“Okay.”

 

Napoleon runs a hand through his fur, and Illya has to bite on the urge to nuzzle at his snout while he waits for the man to gather his thoughts. He knows, after all, that comfort looks very different for him, and Napoleon is here. It’s more than Illya has any right to ask of him, already.

 

“We’re in Japan,” Napoleon says at last. “Hakodate. We were chasing Mori.”

 

Illya remembers that, he thinks. Snow all around, ice in his lungs and under his paws. Fire inside him, the moon overhead, promising a wild chase…his blood, singing.

 

“His men ambushed us.”

“With fire,” Illya completes, a vague awareness of danger coming back to nag at him. “On long sticks.”

“Rifles,” Napoleon supplies.

 

He’s about to speak again when the memory takes over Illya’s brain. Napoleon, slightly ahead of him. A long—a rifle, raising to aim. Danger, death. _No_.

 

“They hurt you,” Illya growls before Napoleon speaks.

 

He’s still slow and sluggish from the wound in his shoulder though, and despite his recalcitrance it doesn’t take too much effort for Napoleon to make him lie back down.

 

“They _tried_ ,” Napoleon corrects, “but then….”

 

Illya’s tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth.

 

“Blood,” he says.

 

Napoleon’s eyes track Illya’s tongue as he licks at his gums. They taste warm, and thick, and not quite gross yet.

 

“Yes,” Napoleon says.

 

He is quiet for a moment, long enough for Illya to remember lunging forward. The infinite move towards an unprotected throat. A small sun, exploding in his shoulder. Only then, after a pause that lasted a lifetime and no time at all, does Napoleon say:

 

“You were a wolf.”

“I am a wolf,” Illya corrects.

 

He refuses to follow Napoleon’s gaze downward, even if most of him is hidden under the blankets. It’s still too soon for that.

 

“Sometimes,” he amends.

“Okay,” Napoleon says, something dream-like in his tone. “Can you explain that?”

 

Illya frowns, clean-cut images melting into the complexity of humanness with every second that passes. He used to try to grab them, before. Try and bring the wolf into the human world, so to speak, but it’s usually as useful as chasing rabbits made of water. The experience is more frustrating and painful than anything else, but. Napoleon is still here. He asked. He’s never a wolf, but he asked, and so Illya closes his eyes to think, face tingling with the echo of familiar greetings.

 

“It’s…fluid. Sometimes one. Sometimes other. Moon is wolf’s mother. Moon comes. Wolf wants to run. Sometimes, I say yes.”

 

Napoleon mutters something about speaking and lack of sense but, honestly, Illya is too sore and too tired to understand all of it. Clearly, his explanation leaves something to be desired. Napoleon will have to leave with that for a while longer.

With a huff, Illya forces his body to turn, mindful of his injured shoulder, until his nose rests against Napoleon’s hip. He breathes his partner in, slow and deliberate, through his nose, grateful for the uncharacteristic absence of nose-searing cologne. Napoleon, after a quiet startle, runs his fingers through Illya’s hair again and, eventually, Illya sinks into the feeling entirely.

 

***

 

Illya jerks into wakefulness with aching hands and feet, skin wet with blood he’s spent his entire life trying to clean off. The dream fades out of his mind like water falling out of his hands, but his heart keeps hammering with it, and Illya sits up too fast for the pain to register until he’s done. Somewhere, long ago, his mother bites at his heels to make him run faster, tearing him out of woods and back to a house she already knows they’ll have to leave. Illya can still smell it, the mud of Moscow splattering against his legs, the plush carpeting of their building as they raced up the stairs just fast enough to greet the KGB and send his father off. He knows better, by now, than to wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t made it. If they’d been forced to go on the run, like the rest of their pack before them. The past is the past, and he can hardly change it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to carry a graveyard in his chest.

It’s useless to chase after wolf memories but, with patience, you can trick them into coming back. Illya, while his heartbeat settles, closes his eyes and greets them all in turn. Solitude. Fear. Restraint. Years spent learning how not to exist, learning not to yearn for the brief pain of melting bones and the taste of blood and small game in his mouth. He remembers Berlin and a cologne so strong he could have smelled it from kilometers away. Rome, and the smell of soap mixing with Brylcreem. Japan, and the abrupt smell of fear around Napoleon. Japan, and the way his body knew to turn before he even realized it.

 

A knock at the door jerks Illya back to the present, and he cringes at how croaky he sounds as he tells Napoleon to come in. He wrapped the blankets around himself again, not quite ready for the sight of his human form just yet, but that doesn’t prevent the shiver from running down his spine when Napoleon sits on the futon with a face that means business. Illya’s stomach turns to ice again, cold fingers squeezing at his heart, and he braces himself for the inevitable moment Napoleon realizes the enormity of what Illya is. For a moment, he almost wants to sink back under the blanket. Better yet: to turn back into a wolf and run until he can’t feel his body anymore. He is, however, Russian, a wolf, and a KGB agent. He has pride.

 

Without relinquishing his hold of the blanket, Illya makes himself sit up and face his partner.

 

“How do you feel?” Napoleon asks in Russian.

 

Illya gapes.

 

“Illya,” Napoleon says again, accent coloring the name, “how do you feel?”

“Human,” Illya replies.

 

His shoulder still hurts, but it will heal sooner rather than later, and it’s hardly the first time he was shot, anyway. Napoleon’s words, though, his face….

 

“Why do you care?”

 

This time, it’s Napoleon who stares, mouth half open like Illya just said started tap dancing for no reason. For the briefest second, it looks like he is about to launch into one of those overwrought tirades he’s so fond of, but he seems to think better of it at the last second. Instead, he asks:

 

“Long sentences?”

“I’ll manage them.”

 

Napoleon’s lips twitch upward, almost too quick for Illya to catch. The man looks brittle but not fragile, tired, but not scared. Deep inside the cavernous vault of Illya’s chest, something warm stirs awake.

 

“You’re my friend,” Napoleon says.

 

The way he says it carries warmth, trust, and the unexpected weight of truth. I turns Illya’s surprised smile strong enough that it doesn’t vanish when Napoleon adds:

 

“You’re also a wolf.”

“Yes,” Illya says.

 

He’s surprised, despite Napoleon’s serious expression, to realize how easy it is to answer him.

 

“Sometimes,” Napoleon specifies.

 

Illya nods.

 

“When did it start?”

“Centuries ago,” Illya says, wincing when he forgets he can’t shrug yet. “My parents’ pack was the oldest in Russia.”

“What happened to them?”

 

‘Fire on long sticks’, Illya thinks. Smoke, steel jaws, packs of dogs and bands of very determined men. A litany of things and people who haven’t been afraid of teeth and claw in a long, long time. There was running, Illya presumes. Hiding, until they couldn’t anymore. Until his family was forced to stay in Moscow, with nowhere left to hide but the very heart of danger, until his father had to chose between going to his death peacefully or exposing the three of them. Illya closes his eyes.

 

“They died,” he says. “My parents—I’m the last one.”

 

Illya opens his eyes to such an expression of horror and compassion on Napoleon’s face he has to look away. Warmth floods his ears, his neck, his chest. He tightens the blanket around him before he amends:

 

“The last of our pack. There are others in the world.” Illya isn’t quite sure what makes him add: “I’ve met some of them.”

 

He killed some of them, too. Sometimes in self-defense, the kills drowned in the cacophony of marching feet and split knuckles that steals the worst moments of his life away from him. Others, he has met and killed as official target, and the taste of their blood floods his mouth every time he needs to remember what sort of weapons could leave scars like teeth marks. He hears them in his dreams sometimes, howling his name until he forgets what words are, clawing at him until they turn even the silliest parts of his life into a battlefield. They haunt his mornings too, cling to his mind long after he jerks awake, pull at his lungs and chest with relentless fingers until—until—

 

“It’s okay,” Napoleon says, short-circuiting the panic storming Illya’s lungs, “it’s okay. You did what you had to.”

 

His voice is soft, like he forgot he was talking to a predator. Soft like he thinks every wolf in the world is a dog and every dog is a puppy. Part of Illya bristles at the tone, but the rest of him has to clamp down on a whine—longs for the warmth of fur against him and slow, welcoming licks over his snout and lips. Illya remembers how, before he remembered words, Napoleon did just that, and for the first time in a very long time he allows himself to sag, just a little.

 

“I’ve been alone for a long time,” he admits, too tired to care about the smallness of his voice.

“I know,” Napoleon says, even softer than before. “So have I.”

 

This isn’t the same as a real conversation, as exposing the details of their sufferings. Illya doesn’t think either of them will ever truly be ready for that. But somewhere, over Napoleon’s shoulder, Illya glimpses a host of ghosts and thinks, maybe, it’ll be a little easier to live with the graveyard in his memory.

He lets Napoleon pull him into a hug, rests his head in the crook of his partner’s neck and slings his own arms around the man’s waist. The smell of him is familiar, comforting, and Illya doesn’t quite cry but his eyes burn anyway, relief chasing the tears when Napoleon doesn’t let go.

 

“Thank you,” Illya says a long moment later, when they finally pull apart but don’t quite let go of each other.

 

Napoleon smiles and nods. Then he pauses to search Illya’s face and, when he finds what he was looking for, puts on the widest of his grins and says:

 

“Just play a game of fetch with me and we’ll be even.”

 

Napoleon collapses in near-hysterical laughter before Illya even fully registers the offense, and doesn’t stop snorting at his own ridiculous wit until night falls, but that’s fine by Illya.

 

He’ll just have to make sure to chew on his partner’s shoes.

**Author's Note:**

> So. This is probably a lot less angsty than you wanted, CoffeeAndTin, and I feel like there's more comfort than hurt, but hopefully you'll like it anyway!


End file.
